M. Butterfly - 2017 - Broadway Tickets, News, Info & More

M. Butterfly - TimeOut NY

Three decades later, M. Butterfly remains provocative and timely, with a great deal to unpack-in part because Hwang, in an unusually extensive revision of the text for its current Broadway revival, has stuffed it with new information. The humiliated Rene Gallimard (Clive Owen) still begins the play in the cocoon of a French prison cell, guiding the audience through flashbacks to his time with Song Liling (Jin Ha, continuously intriguing). But the nature of their intercultural romance has shifted. When they meet in this version, Gallimard knows that Song is male; Song must invent a far-fetched family history to convince him otherwise. These changes, among others, help shift the storytelling away from symbolism and toward a more specific account of a particular relationship, albeit a bizarre one. Aside from lively dance sequences set at the Peking Opera-which was traditionally all-male, Song notes, "Because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act"-there are few spectacular flourishes.

Review: ‘M. Butterfly’ Returns to Broadway on Heavier Wings - New York Times

Though it bent (and blew) the minds of rapt audiences with its elusive opalescence nearly three decades ago, David Henry Hwang's "M. Butterfly" returns to Broadway on heavier, drabber wings. True, the revival that opened on Thursday night at the Cort Theater, directed by Julie Taymor, has basically the same anatomy as its predecessor. But it has undeniably morphed into a more prosaic creature, and the tantalizing mists that surrounded its initial run have dissolved as if under a harsh morning sun. When the enigmatic title character in this breakthrough drama about the illusions of sexual and cultural identity is brusquely commanded to "Strip!" by a stricken suitor, you're apt to think, "No need guys. That's already been taken care of."